He turned upon the doorstep, and taking between his fingers the hem of Truelove’s apron fell to plaiting it. “A woman named Deirdre, who lived before the days of Gillean-na-Tuaidhe, made that song. She was not born in that land, but it was dear to her because she dwelt there with the man whom she loved. They went away, and the man was slain; and where he was buried, there Deirdre cast herself down and died.” His voice changed, and all the melancholy of his race, deep, wild, and tender, looked from his eyes. “If to-day you found yourself in that loved land, if this parched grass were brown heather, if it stretched down to a tarn yonder, if that gray cloud that hath all the seeming of a crag were crag indeed, and eagles plied between the tarn and it,”--he touched her hand that lay idle now upon her knee,--“if you came like Deirdre lightly through the heather, and found me lying here, and found more red than should be in the tartan of the MacLeans, what would you do, Truelove? What would you cry out, Truelove? How heavy would be thy heart, Truelove?” Truelove sat in silence, with her eyes upon the sky above the dream crags. “How heavy would grow thy heart, Truelove, Truelove?” whispered the Highlander. Up the winding water, to the sedges and reeds below the little yard, glided the boy Ephraim in his boat. The Quakeress started, and the color flamed into her gentle face. She took up the distaff that she had dropped, and fell to work again. “Thee must not speak to me so, Angus MacLean,” she said. “I trust that my heart is not hard. Thy death would grieve me, and my father and my mother and Ephraim”-- “I care not for thy father and mother and Ephraim!” MacLean began impetuously. “But you do right to chide me. Once I knew a green glen where maidens were fain when paused at their doors Angus, son of Hector, son of Lachlan, son of Murdoch, son of Angus that was named for Angus Mor, who was great-grandson of Hector of the Battles, who was son of Lachlan Lubanach! But here I am a landless man, with none to do me honor,--a wretch bereft of liberty”-- “To me, to all Friends,” said Truelove sweetly, halting a little in her work, “thee has now what thee thyself calls freedom. For God meant not that one of his creatures should say to another: ‘Lo, here am I! Behold thy God!’ To me, and my father and mother and Ephraim, thee is no bond servant of Marmaduke Haward. But thee is bond servant to thy own vain songs; thy violent words; thy idle pride, that, vaunting the cruel deeds of thy forefathers, calls meekness and submission the last worst evil; thy shameless reverence for those thy fellow creatures, James Stewart and him whom thee calls the chief of thy house,--forgetting that there is but one house, and that God is its head; thy love of clamor and warfare; thy hatred of the ways of peace”--